With clear insight into the scheme of the U.S. imperialists to divide the territory of Korea after occupying south Korea and their moves to keep Korea permanently divided through the fabrication of a puppet regime after the liberation of Korea, the President personally initiated the convention of a nationwide political consultative meeting for preventing the division of the country, and energetically led the struggle for realizing it, the statement said.

It noted that the President's patriotic initiative commanded absolute support and welcome by all Koreans and there took place with success the north-south joint conference, a grand national gathering in which 695 representatives of 56 political parties and social organizations from the north and the south took part, in Pyongyang from April 19 to 23, Juche 37 (1948).

It pointed out that the joint conference held under the direct guidance of the President solemnly declared at home and abroad that the Korean nation resolutely stands against the U.S. imperialists' and the puppet forces' moves for the national division, and will certainly build a genuine reunified government by the efforts of the Koreans themselves.

The statement said that the joint conference was a historic grand gathering which firmly rallied all the Koreans under the banner of reunification and patriotism, and a shining fruition of the President's line on independent national reunification and his idea on the great unity of the nation.

It said that in the last period of his life he authored and made public "10-Point Programme of the Great Unity of the Whole Nation for the Reunification of the Country", thus powerfully encouraging all the Koreans in the north and the south and abroad to achieve the great cause of reunification.

It stated that all the Koreans in the north and the south and overseas should realize the nationwide grand gathering for reunification without fail by pooling patriotic intention and will for reunification under the uplifted banner of the great national unity and open up a broad avenue to independent reunification.